Beyoncé's date with destiny

Sixty million CDs sold, the world’s biggest black female singer and star of musical blockbuster Dreamgirls – can Beyoncé contain her hilariously diva-like ways for an audience with Live?

Beyoncé, like Madonna, Mariah and Britney, has achieved that level of celebrity where she no longer needs a surname. In fact, she’s one of the few global superstars recognisable by a single body part: in this instance, her famous behind, a full and rounded affair that could, in Beyoncé’s own parlance, be termed ‘bootylicious’.

Today, that iconic derrière is immaculately encased in a pair of designer jeans bearing the label House of Dereon, the company that just happens to be run by Beyoncé and her mother, Tina Knowles, who is also her daughter’s stylist.

Dreamgirls is her fourth and highest-profile movie to date, and co-stars Eddie Murphy and Jamie Foxx. She plays Deena, a member of a Sixties girl group loosely based on legendary Motown trio The Supremes.

The singer turned actress is currently travelling the world to promote Dreamgirls, and today is the picture of casual elegance and sophistication in her short-sleeved gold Moschino shirt and high-heeled shoes.

The film has been surrounded by controversy. As well as having to lose weight for it, she had to endure the hardship of kissing handsome heart-throb Foxx. Did her boyfriend, notorious rapper Jay-Z, mind? Foxx himself joked about being beaten up by Jay-Z over the kissing scenes.

‘I can tell you there was no awkwardness at all,’ she smiles as she sinks into a leather sofa in her hotel room. ‘It was strange but it’s part of acting. You’ve got to do it. I treated it as any other scene. Afterwards we moved on.’

More serious were the reports of tantrums from Beyoncé due to the praise lavished by film reviewers on Jennifer Hudson who plays her Dreamgirls band-mate, Effie. The New York Post said, ‘Hudson makes Beyoncé look like a pretty extra.’

It seems there was a grain of truth in the story. ‘There were reports that I had destroyed my personal relationships for the sake of the role, but that was greatly exaggerated,’ she says. Was she jealous of Hudson?

‘I knew that the character I played wasn’t the star,’ she huffs, tossing her mane of hair away from her beautifully made-up face. ‘She wasn’t the underdog. She didn’t have the struggle and the pain and the dramatic scenes that Effie had, and I was fine with that.

‘I’m already a big star. I didn’t do the movie to become a bigger star. The thought of being bigger is actually scary. I already have nine Grammy Awards. Everyone knows I can sing. I didn’t do it for the money, either – I did it for a quarter of the money I usually make.

I did it because I wanted people to know that I can act and that I can play someone so different from myself.’

This no-nonsense, hard-working attitude has paid off spectacularly for the 25-year-old Beyoncé. At the age of nine, she formed the girl group that would become Destiny’s Child and go on to sell 60 million albums and singles worldwide.

‘It’s rare that people can have the commercial success that I’ve had and the respect that I’ve had,’ she says, without any noticeable sense of how self-regarding this comment makes her sound.

She pauses to wrap a glass of water in her exquisitely manicured fingers – a devout Baptist, she abstains from alcohol. ‘I think it’s because ultimately people recognise talent and can see it’s passion and not a product.

‘Work is my drug. I’m not worried about having a breakdown. There are negative sides to fame, sure. It’s hard to find yourself when everyone tells you everything you do is excellent. It’s hard to stay humble, hard to make friends. It’s hard to know who is real. It’s also hard if you don’t have people you trust before you become famous.’

She talks of the filming of Dreamgirls in grand diva terms. ‘I had a lot of dark days – it was like therapy for me,’ she explains, her smile turning to a frown as she recalls the process.

‘To get to those places and for them to be true, I had to go back to the most painful things that have happened to me. I was very emotional. And when I got home I’d start crying and crying. Every day I would be walking around with swollen eyes.’

Among the ‘painful things’ she drew on were, she reveals, her uncle ‘passing away from Aids’ when she was younger. It is a curious statement, though, because in truth, Beyoncé Giselle Knowles’s life and career have seen one amazing achievement after another.

With her happy suburban middle-class upbringing in Houston, Texas, hers is not a success story fuelled by a desire to escape poverty and despair.

In 2003, she left the biggest-selling girl group ever to go solo, a decision that proved rewarding when she became the first woman to have a No 1 single (Crazy In Love) and No 1 album (Dangerously In Love) simultaneously in the US and Britain.

Unlike J-Lo, that other multiracial entertainer aiming for multimedia appeal, Beyoncé has carried her Midas touch on to the silver screen: in 2002, she co-starred in the comedy box-office smash Austin Powers In Goldmember.

She can sing, dance and act; Beyoncé also has her own perfume line and promotional deals with Pepsi and L’Oréal. Yet, despite her position as probably the best-known black US female after Oprah, Beyoncé hasn’t succumbed to showbiz temptations or gone off the rails like many of her peers. Mariah Carey suffered an emotional and physical collapse following disastrous record sales. And Whitney Houston is rarely out of the newspapers with tawdry tales of substance abuse and vicious fights with her husband, Bobby Brown.

Compared to these car-crash careers, Beyoncé’s is fairly scandal free. She is the ‘Survivor’, the ‘Independent Woman’: determined, yet seemingly lacking in ego. ‘I think I’m pretty balanced,’ she says. ‘I know when to be strong and when not to be, and when I am it’s like a quiet storm.’

Her copybook is not totally blot-free, however. Her manager and father, Matthew Knowles, was criticised for driving out former members of Destiny’s Child, resulting in legal action, and he is rumoured to have dabbled with drugs and embarked on a string of extra-marital liaisons.

It was recently reported that a group of Beyoncé fans signed a petition requesting a re-shoot of the video for Déjà Vu, the first single from B-Day, because they were so scarred by its graphic sexual content. And her commitment to making her Dreamgirls character seem real drew complaints about her dramatic weight loss.

To achieve the waif-like form of the Diana Ross-like Deena, she had to lose 20lb in just over two weeks. ‘I’m really focused and when I want something

I try everything in my power to do it,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want people to think I wasn’t taking this seriously.’

To get so thin, so quickly, she fasted on water mixed with cayenne pepper and maple syrup. ‘It was tough. The drink gave me all the vitamins I needed, but I felt weak,’ she says. ‘At the wrap party, I ate so many cupcakes, I was sick.’

She has since regained the weight; those womanly curves are once more in place. For someone so used to being the centre of attention, she’s refreshingly unconcerned about her appearance. Would she ever have plastic surgery or Botox? ‘I’d be an idiot to say what I’d do when I’m 40,’ she says.

Beyoncé is driven by success. ‘I want to be the first black woman to win an Oscar, a Grammy and a Tony,’ she says, standing to say goodbye. But before she does, she makes sure there is no confusion between Deena the Dreamgirl and Beyoncé the brand.

‘We all have our insecurities and I see 20 or more things that are wrong with me that I’ve accepted,’ she says with a smile and a firm handshake. ‘But I’m way more powerful and big than the character, way stronger and in control.’

‘Dreamgirls’ is out on February 2. Beyoncé’s new single, ‘Listen’, taken from her album ‘B-Day’, is out on February 19